Old Testament eternal life.
"Even life forevermore." There is a curious legend attaching to the dew of Hermon. "An old pilgrim narrates that every morning at sunrise a handful of dew floated down from the summit of Hermon, and deposited itself upon the Church of St. Mary, where it was immediately gathered up by Christian leeches, and was found a sovereign remedy for all diseases." This legend suggests one of the connotations of the term "life for evermore."
I. IT MEANS ALWAYS AVAILABLE. The natural processes which form the dew of Hermon will go on as long as there is a Hermon; and God's blessing will be prepared for his people as long as he has a people. Dew and blessing are always available, so long as they are needed. But everything depends upon our using what is available. The dew of Hermon practically fails when the leeches neglect to gather it. The blessing of God practically ends when men no longer care to seek or receive it. Man's blessing from God is "life for evermore;" but man can himself put the limit to God's "evermore."
II. IT MEANS REALITY, NOT MERELY APPEARANCE, We think chiefly of God's blessing as a prosperity of our circumstances, and that can never be, and had better never be, continuous. It is altogether better to have that kind of blessing from God changeable, because our circumstances cannot remain long the same, and the relation of circumstances to us, and the influence of circumstances on us, are constantly varying. If God were to imprison and fix one set of circumstances for ever, and give us to choose which we would have thus fixed, we should be hopelessly puzzled, and God would be doing us no kindness. People talk about "for ever" and "everlasting," without thinking to what alone those terms can be applied, if they are to represent any real blessing to us. The entire sphere of the sensual cannot be "for evermore." It is of its very nature that it begins and ends. The "fashion of this world passeth away." It is life that is for evermore. It is the spiritual being that man is that lives forever. It is the spiritual character that man wins that abides forever. And helping him to win that character is the blessing—the "life for evermore" which God bestows.—R.T.
HOMILIES BY C. SHORT